Screens That's a wrap

In her first film in 15 years (her last was 1990's Stanely & Iris, co-starring Robert de Niro), two-time Academy Award-winning actress and aerobics enthusiast Jane Fonda (Klute), 67, returns to the silver screen for a cat fight with Jennifer Lopez (Shall We Dance?) in Monster-in-Law. Unwilling to accept her son's new fiancée, legendary talk-show host Viola Fields (Fonda) makes it her personal goal to ruin the chances that the couple will walk down the aisle to say "I do." Monster-in-Law opens around the same time Fonda's autobiography My Life So Far and the re-release of her workouts on DVD hit stands. Nice planning.

Becoming the head coach of his 10-year-old son's soccer team, Phil Weston (Will Ferrell) bicycle kicks his way to the top of the little league bracket and lives a tad vicariously in Kicking and Screaming. Phil rips a page from the playbook of his competitive father (Robert Duvall), and takes his duties as a coach a bit too seriously for a group of kids who can barely tie their own cleats, much less kick a ball through a goal. With a cameo by hardnosed ex-NFL coach Mike Ditka, these shenanigans already seem more entertaining than those of the fielders in Ladybugs and The Big Green.

In Unleashed, Danny (Jet Li) is raised like a dog and trained to be a fighting machine by his owner (Bob Hoskins). Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby) stars as the blind piano teacher who shows Danny that there is more to life than knuckling someone in the throat `see "A Frankenstein for the kung fu set," May 5-11, 2005`.

Val Kilmer (Alexander), LL Cool J (S.W.A.T.), and Christian Slater (Alone in the Dark) are part of a team of serial-killer profilers who discover that one of their own is a murderer in Mindhunters `see "New Reviews" in this issue of the Current`.

It's back into the misshapen and original mind of director Todd Solondz (Happiness) for Palindromes, a story that centers around a 13-year-old girl who wants to have a baby `see "Two sides of the same coin," May 5-11, 2005`.